Would you like to learn more about our Bachelor’s degree in Business, Religion, Psychology and Early Childhood Education? Come to our Information Meeting on Tuesday, October 18th and hear from students, faculty and staff about our program.

Vanguard University School for Graduate and Professional Studies (SGPS) is happy to announce an Affiliate Partnership with Behavioral Health Works (BHW). This partnership allows BHS staff the opportunity to receive a discount on tuition to further their education and the opportunity for SGPS students to set up trainee and internships to work with clients who have been diagnosed with Autism.

Behavioral Health Works is a premier Autism treatment provider, headquartered in Orange County, CA. They are a Non-Public Agency contracted with various school districts, health insurance plans, and regional centers in California. As a multidisciplinary agency, they offer Autism Evaluations, ABA therapy, ABA parent training, Early Interventions Services, Counseling, as well as Speech and Occupational Therapy.

If you would like to learn more about completing your Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology click here and if you would like to learn more about our Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology click here.

If you company is interested in establishing an Affiliate Partnership with Vanguard University School for Graduate and Professional Studies please contact the Kristi Starkey, Director of Corporate Education Programs by emailing her at kstarkey@vanguard.edu or by calling at 714-668-6109.

I grew up thinking that repentance was mostly rooted in feeling bad, maybe even guilty, about some thing I had done. I had plenty of practice! Often the threat of eternal damnation spurred the appropriate feelings for which repentance was the response and solution – and that usually meant ‘going forward’ at the end of a Sunday night sermon and spending enough time at the altar to alleviate the bad feelings.

In the last few years that I have realized that my understanding of repentance had more to do with not feeling bad any more – than with with any necessary change in behavior. It was possible for me to get good at feeling bad. And that was good enough. In fact, sometimes feeling bad produced an emotional reaction that I mistook for the assurance that God had forgiven me. So the strategy was to feel bad enough for long enough for whatever it was that I had done. And that was repentance. Implicit was the idea that, perhaps, I shouldn’t keep doing bad things – but changed behavior was less the content and more the occasional outcome of repentance.

It was a bit of a shock to discover that repentance, as it is used in the Bible, has to do with a change of behavior arising from a change of mind – and that any feelings are more about the desire for the new than they are about shame over the old. Repentance is about living a new way in the light of a new reality. Jesus called his listeners to repent – to live a new way – as an appropriate and necessary response to the fact that the Kingdom of God was now within their grasp. When John challenges his audience to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” it is interesting to notice how he responds to questions from the crowd concerning what that fruit might look like.

He begins by suggesting that radical generosity is the first demonstration of authentic repentance. “If you have two cloaks, and another has none… do the math! And the same with food…” A repentant tax collector should only collect the amount they are authorized – and not use their position to become wealthy. The soldier under force of repentance should be content with their salary – and not use their cover of authority either to extort money from people, or to make false accusations. Nothing very revolutionary! Or is it?

Imagine what a community shaped by this ordinary repentance – a community made up of people simply doing their jobs, and not taking whatever advantage their position afforded them to get ahead at cost to others.

John thinks that is repentance – living a new way in the light of the Kingdom’s coming. I think he might be on to something.

Professor Doug Peterson teaches in our Graduate and Professional Studies programs at Vanguard University and he was asked to write and essay for Following Jesus: Journeys in Radical Discipleship – Essays in Honor of Ronald J Sider By Paul alexander & Al Tizon (eds). Click Here to order today

Professor Peterson writes in his essay “Jesus’ teachings to the disciples in the Gospel of Mark provide the marching orders for holistic ministry, i.e., for discipling people to faith in Jesus Christ and demonstrating that faith through our actions and service among the needy. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that the transformational experience of salvation, the ethical actions of social concern, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, as seen primarily in the Gospel of Mark, are inextricably linked together in any expression of holistic ministry.

Focusing on Mark 8:22-10:52, the core of Jesus’ teaching on discipleship, I contrast the social and ethical norms of power, authority, control, knowledge, status and wealth, which were accepted in first century culture, with the polar opposite ethical standards – the reversal of the order of things – that Jesus required of his followers under the rules of the kingdom of God. Greatness in leadership, as God measures, is directly related to our actions on behalf of the marginalized and disenfranchised: the poor, sick, disabled, unclean, outcasts, outsiders, the insignificant, and especially, or perhaps specifically, the children.”

For those of you who know Professor Peterson personally, you know he lives by his teachings and has a plaque hanging in his office as a constant reminder that reads:

“One hundred years from now,
It won’t matter what car I drove,
What kind of house I lived in,
How much I had in my bank account,
Nor what my clothes looked like,
But, the world may be a little better,
Because I was important in the life of a child.”

Dr. Gary Tyra, Professor of Religion in our Professional Studies program published a new book A Missional Orthodoxy: Theology and Ministry in a Post-Christian Context

The emerging and missional church movements have raised decisive questions about what it means to embody the Christian faith in a post-Christian and postmodern world. A common reactionary response denies the significance of the context and reasserts the supremacy of classical orthodoxy. An equally common position at the other end of the spectrum involves a rejection of orthodoxy as contextually insensitive and incapable of being inclusive and missional at all. The one asserts its orthodoxy at the expense of being missional and contextual; the other emphasizes generosity at the expense of its fidelity to “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3). The church today needs a theology that is both orthodox and missional–doing justice to both aspects. Gary Tyra has written just such a book. In A Missional Orthodoxy he critically engages with the works of Brian McLaren and Marcus Borg for the sake of developing a comprehensive missional theology that retains what he calls the “four Christological verities” at the heart of Christian doctrine. Tyra discusses the methodological question of contextualization, offering an incarnational model of recontextualization that unites the postmodern insights of the culture with the truths of the biblical text. On the basis of this missional foundation, he examines all the major Christian doctrines in order to overcome the false antithesis between a fighting fundamentalism and a too-accommodating liberalism. The result is a humble, modest, missionally faithful orthodoxy that provides a compelling witness within a world of competing extremes.